ving General Schofield; and
the late massacre at Lawrence, Kansas, is pressed as evidence of that
imbecility. To my mind that fact scarcely tends to prove the proposition.
That massacre is only an example of what Grierson, John Morgan, and many
others might have repeatedly done on their respective raids, had they
chosen to incur the personal hazard, and possessed the fiendish hearts to
do it.

The charge is made that General Schofield, on purpose to protect the
Lawrence murderers, would not allow them to be pursued into Missouri.
While no punishment could be too sudden or too severe for those murderers,
I am well satisfied that the preventing of the threatened remedial raid
into Missouri was the only way to avoid an indiscriminate massacre there,
including probably more innocent than guilty. Instead of condemning, I
therefore approve what I understand General Schofield did in that respect.

The charges that General Schofield has purposely withheld protection from
loyal people and purposely facilitated the objects of the disloyal are
altogether beyond my power of belief. I do not arraign the veracity of
gentlemen as to the facts complained of, but I do more than question the
judgment which would infer that those facts occurred in accordance with
the purposes of General Schofield.

With my present views, I must decline to remove General Schofield. In
this I decide nothing against General Butler. I sincerely wish it were
convenient to assign him a suitable command. In order to meet some
existing evils I have addressed a letter of instructions to General
Schofield, a copy of which I enclose to you.

As to the enrolled militia, I shall endeavor to ascertain better than
I now know what is its exact value. Let me say now, however, that your
proposal to substitute national forces for the enrolled militia implies
that in your judgment the latter is doing something which needs to be
done; and if so, the proposition to throw that force away and to supply
its place by bringing other forces from the field where they are urgently
needed seems to me very extraordinary. Whence shall they come? Shall they
be withdrawn from Banks, or Grant, or Steele, or Rosecrans? Few things
have been so grateful to my anxious feelings as when, in June last, the
local force in Missouri aided General Schofield to so promptly send
a large general force to the relief of General Grant, then investing
Vicksburg and menaced from without by General Johnston